Sabri Ciftci

Modernization, Islam, or Social Capital: What Explains Attitudes Toward Democracy in the Muslim World?

This article explains the determinants of individual support for democracy in 10 Muslim-majority countries. Starting with economic and cultural interpretations of modernization theory, the author advances an argument exploring cross-linkages between macro- and micro-level implications of this theory as they relate to attitudes toward democracy. The author also provides a test of two alternative explanations: social capital and Islamic values. A series of cross-national and ordinary least squares regressions utilizing the fourth wave of the World Values Survey demonstrates that, 50 years later, modernization theory is still a powerful tool for explaining democratic attitudes. Particularly, perceptions of gender equality show strong associations with democratic orientations. Although some support is found for the positive effect of political trust, religiosity and Islamic values poorly predict support for democracy in the Muslim world.

Islamophobia and Threat Perceptions: Explaining Anti-Muslim Sentiment in the West

This article investigates the determinants of anti-Muslim sentiment in the West. Starting from the premise that Islamophobic attitudes are more nuanced than a simple dislike of Muslims, I focus on specific forms of attitudes which link Muslims to violence and terrorism. Data from the Pew Global Attitudes Surveys are used to test three theories: perceived threat, social identity, and cognitive capabilities. A series of logit estimations are used for the empirical analysis of individual level data in the USA, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Spain. The results show that perceived realistic and symbolic threat is the most significant source of Islamophobic attitudes in the West. While individuals cognitively differentiate between general feelings toward Muslims and their specific characteristics, higher levels of education significantly reduces negative sentiments. A good number of Westerners think of Muslims as violent individuals while some believe that they support al-Qaeda. Citizens in the West are more likely to associate Muslims with terrorism if they feel threatened by their physical and cultural existence.

Secular-Islamist cleavage, values, and support for democracy and shari'a in the Arab world

Public opinion polls demonstrate that Arab citizens support both democracy and shari’a. I argue that individual values related to the secular-Islamist cleavage are instrumental in explaining this joint support. The analysis of the Arab Barometer Survey shows that individuals holding Islamic values are more favorable of shari’a, whereas those with secularist values tend to support democracy. However, the bivariate probit estimations also confirm that Arab opinion about these governing principles is more complementary and less divergent. The results imply that constitutional models combining Islam and democracy, rather than strictly secular institutions, may be more acceptable to Arab citizens.

Committee Assignments in a Nascent Party System: The Case of the Turkish Grand National Assembly

In the USA, scholars have developed theories to explain the role of legislative committees, but these theories have not been widely tested outside the USA. This ambivalence results from the perception that the strength of political parties in parliamentary systems undermines the importance of other legislative institutions, including the committees. We surveyed members of the Turkish parliament during a period of considerable party-system turmoil to test the applicability of the prominent theories of committee organization (the distributive, informational, and partisan theories) to a parliamentary system. We found strong support for the distributive and partial support for the informational specialization and partisan theories. We consider the implications of these results for our understanding of the role of committees in parliamentary democracies and the study of parliamentary politics.

Treaties, Collective Responses and the Determinants of Aggregate Support for European Integration

Scholarly research investigating the determinants of support for European integration at the individual level is abundant, but the analysis of aggregate-level indicators is relatively less developed. This study examines the collective responses of the Europeans to different environments of integration by using a multiple interrupted time series design with panel data. The results suggest that the context of integration after important treaties changes the aggregate support for integration significantly. More importantly, the analysis provides evidence challenging some findings of earlier studies with regard to the impact of aggregate-level indicators of support for integration.

Social Identity and Attitudes Toward Foreign Policy: Evidence from a Youth Survey in Turkey

This paper focuses on the relationship between social identity based on national, religious, or international affiliations and attitudes toward foreign policy in the Turkish context. Evidence is drawn from an original survey conducted among university students in Turkey. The results show that students’ social identity has a significant correlation with their perceptions of foreign policy. Most Turkish university students provide conditional support for the new directions in Turkey’s foreign policy, but those with an Islamic identity appear to be more supportive of the Adalet ve Kalkonma Partisi’s (Justice and Development Party) policies. Most university students believe that Turkey’s future lies in the European Union and the Central Asian Turkic republics rather than in the Middle East. Overall, the perceptions of educated youth toward foreign policy are shaped by both social identity and their conceptions of national interest. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdou was given a hero’s welcome in Turkey after he stormed out of a meeting during a heated debate with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres at the Davos Economic forum in 2009. The event, known as the “one-minute crisis,” was a reflection of Turkey’s foreign policy activism in the new millennium. 1 This activism is usually attributed to the Adalet ve Kalkonma Partisi (AKP, the Justice and Development Party) and its chief foreign policy strategist Ahmet Davutou glu, who became Turkey’s foreign minister in 2009. The new activism in foreign policy is most visible in the government’s approach toward Middle Eastern countries. The Islamic credentials of the AKP leadership combined with the country’s increasing orientation toward this region have led some students of Turkish politics to talk of the “Middle Easternization” of foreign policy 2 or of a profound shift “enacting neo-Ottomanism,” 3 although others have argued that Turkey’s foreign policy continues to be oriented mainly toward the West. 4 One line of criticism of the AKP’s foreign policy builds on the argument that a trend of Islamization is taking place in Turkish society and that this is causing a shift from the West to the East in foreign

Hiding behind the party brand or currying favor with constituents: Why do representatives engage in different types of constituency-oriented behavior?

Why do representatives prioritize certain types of constituency service in parliamentary systems? This study argues that the choice for constituency-oriented activities is conditioned by both partisan factors and legislative role orientations. Two novel data sets combining behavioral and attitudinal measures of constituency-oriented behavior are used for empirical tests: an elite survey including detailed interviews with 204 members of the Turkish parliament and 4000 parliamentary questions tabled by these members. The results from a series of ordered logit, ordinary least squares (OLS), and negative binomial regression estimations confirm that members of parliament choose different types of constituency-oriented activities based on their visibility to the party leadership and their constituency. This choice is primarily driven by partisanship and members of parliament’s perceptions about the influence of party leader in renomination. The analysis provides important insights about the role of partisan factors as drivers of parliamentary behavior.

Who Favors al-Qaeda? Anti-Americanism, Religious Outlooks, and Favorable Attitudes toward Terrorist Organizations

This study examines why ordinary people sympathize with a terrorist network in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Holding literalist religious outlook resonating with al-Qaeda’s marginal interpretation of Islam constant, it is maintained that anti-Americanism and its varieties matter a great deal in explaining attitudes toward al-Qaeda. Using Pew Global Attitudes Surveys conducted in Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia, the authors run conditional mixed process estimations combining seemingly unrelated regressions with selection models to account for the missing values and endogeneity problems. The analysis reveals significant variation both cross-nationally and in the effects of varieties of anti-Americanism on favorability of al-Qaeda. While the dislike of certain aspects of American culture generates sympathy toward al-Qaeda, anti-Americanism as a general attitude does not. More interestingly, dislike of American democracy, technology, and policy has either negative or no effect on favorable views of al-Qaeda. Literalist religious outlook generates positive views of al-Qaeda, but religiosity has a negative impact. These findings imply that we need to draw careful distinctions between politicized Islamic preferences and personal religiosity as well as the different types of anti-American sentiments in understanding Muslim political attitudes about terrorist groups.

Islam, Religious Outlooks, and Support for Democracy

Despite a wealth of studies examining Muslim religiosity and democracy, uncertainty regarding Islam and attitudes toward democracy remains. Although the claims concerning the incompatibility of Islam and democracy are generally discarded, public opinion scholarship has yet to build much further from this important first step or incorporate a strong theoretical framework for analysis beyond this basic foundation. This paper seeks to integrate literature in social theory on religious worldviews with novel conceptualizations and measurement of distinct religious outlooks among the religious faithful to explain patterns in attitudes toward democracy. We construct a theory with clear expectations regarding these relationships and use the largest and best available survey data (Arab Democracy Barometer, Wave III) to test our predictions using latent class analysis and a series of multivariate regression estimations. The results of our empirical analysis reveal that there are important differences among practicing Muslims regarding the role that religion should play in the social realm and that these differences are relevant to the analysis of how faith shapes preferences for regime type and democracy. The analysis makes a significant contribution to the study of religion and political attitudes.

Self-expression values, loyalty generation, and support for authoritarianism: evidence from the Arab world

ABSTRACT This study examines the micro foundations of political support in Arab polities. Most Arab states rank highly in aggregate human development or economic wealth, but they lag behind in democracy defying the predictions of modernization theory. Modernization and human development perspective implies that increased resources and self-expression values will induce critical political outlooks toward the regime. This study questions the applicability of this theory to the Arab region and proposes that colonial state formation history, international patron–client relations, and the domestic patronage networks have more leverage in explaining regime support in the Arab region. A series of multilevel and fixed effects regression estimations utilizing the Arab Democracy Barometer reveal that modernization perspective has some relevance. However, world system theory inspired patron–client perspective and loyalty generation through domestic distributive mechanisms play a greater role in shaping political attitudes. The results provide important insights about micro foundations of Arab authoritarianism and the differential utility of emancipative values formed in the context of hierarchical world order.